Innocence is Drowned
by Last of the Loneliness
Summary: A drabble for each character. Three: David's always been a faithful man.
1. Tess

Tess won't ever forget her first kill.

Soldiers aren't as lucky as Fireflies; they don't get to ease into the process. They're desperate for recruits, so they thrust a gun into her eighteen-year-old hands, show her how to load, reload, and fire, and they send her to the streets. Unlike other soldiers, Tess won't even be lucky enough to have her first kill be an Infected, the nice bridge between an animal and a human. Her only experience with death is snuffing spiders out with tissue. She remembers squishing bugs and hearing their skeletons crack.

She forces her hands to be steady on the gun. She tries not to shake. She tries not to think about it, about the fact that killing is as easy as pulling a trigger. She considers the abstract possibility of lifting it to her own skull and applying pressure with her index finger.

She doesn't, though.

She focuses on the faces of her family. They need supplies. They need to survive. And if she has to destroy her innocence in the meantime, so be it. She's shot people in games before—how different can this be?

_It won't be bad if you don't think about it. You're doing it 'cause you have to. Just focus on pulling the trigger. Don't think about the person._

Tess knows the moment is coming her first day on patrol. Soldiers always end up killing, whether they find Fireflies, smugglers, or Infected. Quarantine Zones maintain their safety only through a massive death count.

"Your first day, huh?" one of her fellows asks, brusquely but not without pity. "You'll get used to it. Just do as you're told."

_Like the Nazis did,_ Tess thinks dully, and her hands clench around the smooth handle of the gun they've given her. She's holding it so tightly that the metal is no longer cold.

Trepidation is the worst part. Throughout the day the thought hangs over her as they roam the streets, scan people for infection, chase away loiterers. Her eyes are glassy and her breath comes in short bursts. She licks her lips and assures herself that the fear will be worse than the action. She almost wishes it would happen already, just happen, so it's over with.

The day ends with them at the border of the zone, checking incomers. Officers force people to their knees and scan for infection. Those unfortunates who turn up positive get a quick syringe and a relatively painless death.

Tess is walking down the end of the line, no other officers around. A man at the end of the line is visibly nervous, twitching, his eyes going back and forth. Before it happens, Tess knows it's going to happen; before it happens, Tess knows what she's going to do.

He lunges to his feet and runs for the gate. Without thinking, without feeling, only because it feels like all she can do, Tess remembers her training and aims the gun and pulls the trigger again and again. Her shots land. The body hits the ground with a thud. Unthinking, unfeeling, she watches blood pool underneath him on the ground.

One of her teammates gives her a curt nod. "Good job. It's always annoying when they try to run."

Good job? What exactly did she do that deserves praise? Tess doesn't feel like a successful soldier. She feels like a fucking murderer. She could have let him run. She could have let her comrades take him down. She could have claimed she was paralyzed, a perfectly legitimate excuse.

But she pulled the trigger. She killed him.

She's a murderer.

And the worst part is that she can't feel anything. She wants to feel sad for the man she killed. Her mind is telling her that he had a family, that people loved him, but her heart isn't responding. She's already forgetting his face. She wants to feel sadness, or pain, or anything human. That would be the natural response, wouldn't it? But she can't. She feels empty, like she didn't just pull the trigger, like she didn't just end a life.

She goes home to the family she convinced herself to kill for and looks at them like she's never seen them before. She hates them all for sitting there, smiling blithely up at her, clueless as to anything she's just gone through.

"How was your first day?"

Tess furrows her eyebrows at her mother. What does she expect? Her first day involved her watching her fellows act like death was nothing. Her first day involved a pat on the back for a murder. She's killed and she's going to have to kill again.

"Fine."

She doesn't sleep that night. She lies awake and stares at the ceiling, feeling a phantom gun in her fingers, watching the man die over and over again.

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

She cries because she wants to cry, not because she feels sad. There's still just that awful numbness beating through her veins like blood.

Day two sees another three victims. By the end of week one, she stops crying.

The voice in her head doesn't go away.

Murderer.


	2. Joel

Tommy is long gone and Tess is off somewhere, doing whatever the hell she does when they don't have a job to do. She's left him a bottle of bourbon. It sits on the table across from him, reflecting the light in gold and brown. He reads the label.

His finger clenches down on the trigger, but he doesn't pull it.

There are soldiers outside, yelling back and forth. A few minutes ago there was an explosion, probably another bomb of the Fireflies. Joel didn't bother looking out the window when he heard the sound. His gaze was fixed then, as it is now, across the room, anywhere but on what he's holding.

The metal isn't cold against his head any longer. He's been holding it too long. The heat from his body has sapped into it.

His mind is so full of thoughts, so full of emotion, that he feels numb. He can't think about any individual one. He can't think about whether his brother would miss him, whether Tommy would ever even hear he was gone. Tess would do fine on her own; she's the one with all the contacts in this damn city, anyway. And they're all he has now.

His hand is shaking, just slightly, just enough that the muzzle taps over and over again against his skull.

Joel has never been a religious man. He attended church fairly regularly growing up, then never bothered afterward. He's heard that a lot of people go back to religion when they have kids, but he never felt that way with Sarah. She was his miracle; he didn't need any god's confirmation of that. He was too busy for church anyway, or that's what he told himself.

But still, he likes clinging to the remote possibility that upon pulling the trigger, he'll see his little girl again. She's there in his mind now, smiling, her thin face upturned, her pale eyes and hair shining with heavenly light.

"_Hi, Dad. I've been waiting!"_

She would lift up his arm and survey his watch, and then comment in dismay upon discovering that it, just like the one before, ended up breaking. But it wouldn't really matter then, because there was no need for watches in heaven. There would be just infinity, him and his daughter, him and the only thing that had made his life worth living.

Shit.

Suppressing everything doesn't make it go away. It just means that when there's a crack in the wall Joel presents to the world, the full force of a flood of emotions and memories threatens to break through. His vision is going blurry, and the first tear makes its way down his cheek. His hands are shaking so badly that he can't even keep the gun pressed against his skull.

He only pushes everything down because he can't stand having it well up. He can't deal with it. He can't remember his birthday, all those years ago, and the watch Sarah presented him with, and everything going to hell. He can't remember telling her that it would be okay, they were safe, only to have someone he was supposed to be able to trust kill her.

Sarah stares out of his every memory, laughing, smiling, teasing him, crying, frustrated over her homework, running across a soccer field, and it's more than Joel can take. He wants to break down and let everything out. He wants to see her again.

But it's terrifying, the idea of pulling the trigger, the idea of letting a bullet rip through his skull and brain and leave him a corpse. He doesn't even really believe in heaven. He just wants an escape, wants to rest, and he won't allow himself that.

He throws the gun across the table, furious with himself, and stands. He downs the bottle of bourbon in several long gulps and hits the table with his fist, over and over again, until his knuckles are bloody. He falls asleep that evening in a haze of alcohol and pain.

Next week, he tries it again, gun at the base of his skull, and once again he can't do it. It almost becomes routine, staring at the pistol, holding it up, knowing that it's always there as an option. He's just too paralyzed to take it.

_Trust me. It ain't easy._


	3. David

It's cold enough to damp even the brightest of spirits. The windows are left unblocked to allow sunlight in, but they're letting the cold sweep through by the same token. The two men don't wear gloves as they work—the necessity of washing them afterward makes it not worth it—and every few minutes one of them pauses to blow on his knuckles, rub his hands together, trying to get some feeling back.

Yet the cold hasn't damped one of the men's spirits. Even as he works, even as he hacks apart flesh, he's carrying a tune under his breath.

David doesn't remember all the words—hell, even when he regularly went to church, he still had to look at the hymnal to sing along. His memory's never been fantastic, and it's only getting worse as he gets older. And now he has more important things to remember than hymns. But still…

"_Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.  
He has trampled—uh—the grapes of wrath are stored.  
He hath loosed the deadly lightning of his—swift sword.  
His truth is marching on_."

His smile widens, a private smile, as if it was only him in the universe, him and the biting wind and the body lying still and cold underneath his fingers.

In stark contrast, as David's face brightens and brightens, his companion's scowl darkens and darkens, until finally David ceases singing to address the boy.

"What's the matter?"

James, starting as if found guilty of something, returns to the work at hand, concentrating more than necessary on sawing through a particularly tough ankle.

"Nothin'."

"James." David's smile has shifted from one of rapture to the one he usually wears when speaking to his people. Kindly. Wise. Paternal. "Tell me. It's okay."

Knowing now that he has to say something, James takes a long second. He sets the knife down and stares at his hands, white and bloody. He flexes his fingers. Then he looks up to meet his elder's eyes.

"I just…I don't know how you can still believe in God, after all we've been through. After all we've done. Look at this."

David looks. He's looked before. It's easier for him to accept it than it is for the others, he knows. They're hung up on the humanity of their victims. They don't understand what he does, though he tries to tell them.

The cold has been an excellent aid in preserving all of the fresh meat they've collected through their unorthodox hunting practices. The bodies that hang from hooks on the ceiling, skinned and gutted such that they're hardly recognizable, have frost clinging to them. They don't have to worry about storage; they don't have to worry about keeping the meat fresh.

David laughs slightly, shaking his head. He gestures with one hand out at the windows, beyond which wan sunlight and flurries of snow are both visible.

"Yeah, the others ask me that too. Look, James. I don't just believe in God in spite of what's happened. All of this—all of it—it's proof. He's with us."

James shakes his head. The disbelief, almost distrust, is written clearly across his face. "We're out here, we're freezin', we're fightin' ungodly monstrosities, and we're so hungry that we've stooped to cuttin' up people? Yeah, I can really see _God_'s hand there."

David smiles, slowly, patiently, a shepherd guiding sheep, a parent gently correcting a wayward child. "God sent the infection to weed out the unworthy, James. It was time to see who was strong, who really believed in him. You don't believe me? Fine. Look. We're still here. We're still alive. We didn't get infected. The Infected haven't gotten us. Hunters haven't gotten us. It's cold, sure, but we've got shelter. We've got fire. And just when we start getting hungry…?" He waves one hand expansively at the corpse lying between them, half-butchered; half-man, half-meat. "We get visitors. It's just like I say, James—when we're in need, he will provide."

James doesn't look as unhappy any longer, but now there's something else in his face—wariness? David claps him on the shoulder and feels the younger man jerk underneath the abruptness of his touch.

"Tell you what. You get inside with the others and warm up."

James is only too happy to accept the invitation, and he disappears out the door. David picks up the cleaver and continues the job, cutting open the sternum and pulling organs out one by one, blood staining his fingers.

"_Glory, glory, Hallelujah.  
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!  
Glory, glory, Hallelujah, His truth is marching on!"_

A week later, David meets a little girl with a bow, a fiery temper, and dark reddish hair.


	4. Bill

The second mattress is an eyesore. It catches his eyes the way a corpse would—rather, the way a corpse would have before they scattered the streets in hordes. So the next time Bill's camping out at the old church, he drags Frank's old bed outside and sets it alight. He supposes he should feel good about it, feel some sort of catharsis, but he doesn't.

It still prickles on his conscience that he couldn't give Frank any sort of burial. Stupid, sure, and it's presumptuous to treat his old partner any different from all of the other dead. It's not like Frank died asking any favors from him. Maybe if the note had been an apology…

Bill's got an unnaturally sharp memory, something that helped him breeze through school with ease. He looks back with unbridled scorn on his adolescent dreams of becoming an engineer. He'd even been fucking optimistic enough to dream that he'd get to work on something big, maybe for the military, maybe even for NASA. Then he'd ended up working in a shop, doing car repairs. The dull monotony of every day had made him wish that something exciting would happen. And how his prayers had been answered.

It's this sharp memory that lets him remember every word exchanged during his last night with Frank. They were arguing, as was usual in those last days, with Frank desperately trying to persuade Bill to leave. Frank was extremely genial, always a peacekeeper, so every swear from his usually couth mouth was a sign that he was serious.

"_You really want to die here, like this? Your fucking bombs aren't going to keep them away forever! All it takes is one slipup, and then you're just another monster running around with your head turned to mushrooms!"_

"_So you'd rather take your chances out in the goddamned wild? You want to get murdered by a gang of hunters? Or—no! Let me guess! You want to go to Boston and join the military! I'm sure the rations will be great before you're blown up by the Fireflies!"_

"_What's the use of even being alive if we're stuck here, day after day? You roam the perimeter, you set your traps, you clean up. Aren't you tired, Bill? Aren't you bored? There's more to life than sitting in a cage!"_

"_Yeah? You want to go that badly? Go. Get yourself killed. Hell, see the motherfucking world! I'm sure you'd love the view of the Grand Canyon before some clicker pushes you over the edge!"_

The trouble is that Frank's right. Bill doesn't have his horizons set any further than Lincoln. Survival's become its own goal. And somehow, despite its repetitiveness, despite the endless blood and gore and danger, the search for ever-dwindling supplies, Bill doesn't mind too much. There's a part of him, even, that enjoys it. He's good at surviving. He's taught himself to handle a bow and a gun. He's working on building a flamethrower, and every week presents an idea for a new bomb. He's the king of his little territory, thriving on nothing but gut instinct. Kill or be killed. The rule of the wild.

He doesn't usually give any of this that much thought. But ever since Joel and that brat came through, the quiet has been a little more unbearable than usual.

He gets up in the morning and tries not to remember his dreams. Who the hell has pleasant dreams anymore? Not him. Then he tries to ignore the now-conspicuous space where Frank's mattress used to be. Who'd have thought that its absence would prove to be just as annoying as its presence?

He still needs to assemble that next shipment for Tess. He can't wait to see her, interrogate her about why she's sending Joel cross-country with some childish nuisance. His load has been remarkably good, especially since he managed to smuggle several new bottles of pills while on the far side of town. So he puts on his gear and sets out to check his traps and go scavenging in the houses he hasn't yet cleared. They're marked on the map, plain and simple, impossible to fuck up.

The routine feels a little more tired with each day after his discovery of Frank's corpse. His feet start to drag, and he starts to feel fatigued even after a full night's sleep. It never happened before, but now the drive is seeping out of him. When he goes hunting, it's reluctantly, and he doesn't derive the enjoyment he used to from it.

"This one's you, Frank," he mutters, slicing the head off a trapped runner to stop its screeching. "You're as noisy as that, anyway."

His old partner's voice rings clearly in his head as he recalls Frank's suicide note.

_I'd rather be dead than spend another day with you._


End file.
